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Sunday, December 09, 2007

Makwan Mouloudzadeh, an Iranian man, has been hanged for something he was accused of when he was 13-years old, despite his alleged victims withdrawing their accusations and a judicial review being ordered into the sentence.

Makwan Mouloudzadeh had been found guilty of raping three teenage boys when he was 13-years old. The hanging took place on Wednesday morning at a prison in Kermanshah province in western Iran. Human rights groups say international law strictly forbids execution of child offenders, even after they become 18. "On 11 November the head of the justice administration of Kermanshah received an order from the judiciary head, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, to stop the verdict being carried out," the lawyer, Saeed Eqbali, was quoted as saying. "But the case, which was supposed to be reviewed in Tehran, was sent back from there to Kermanshah, and the execution was carried out quickly," the lawyer said.

An estimated 6,000 people - almost the entire population - from the Kurdish Iranian town of Paveh, have attended the funeral of Makwan Moloudzadeh, 19-year-old Iranian Kurdish youth hanged at dawn on Wednesday. Many young people attended the funeral ceremony.

As the funeral took place on Friday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, condemned the execution and called on Iran to respect international conventions against executing juvenile offenders. The head of the Judicial Authority, Ayatollah Mahmoud Shahroudi, had told several humanitarian groups and Molouzadeh's lawyer that the death sentence would be postponed.